Angelina Huang ’24’s debut on wild ice involved six paramedics — not for a medical emergency, but to help her rekindle her lifelong passion for ice skating.
Once she began figure skating at age six, Huang devoted her childhood to the sport. She moved from Saint Louis to Colorado Springs to train at the Olympic Training Center, competed internationally on the U.S. National Team, and even won a National Championship. After an impressive career, Huang decided to retire from professional skating and head to college. “I felt it was time to move on and close that chapter in my life,” she says.
Having spent every day of the last decade on the ice, Huang was ready to step away from skating completely. However, a chance encounter during her sophomore year at UW–Madison reignited her interest. Huang had her skates in her car one day as she drove by Lake Wingra, and she noticed a group of EMTs walking on the ice. Intrigued, she watched from the shore and decided to ask them, “When is this safe enough to skate on?”
The EMTs reassured her, “Now. If we’re walking on it, you could skate on it.”
Excited but a bit nervous, Huang asked if they would watch her while she skated. The EMTs agreed, and for the first time, Huang ventured onto wild ice — as opposed to an ice rink. “I was scared out of my mind,” Huang recalls, “but I went out and skated around while the sun was setting.” This moment marked her return to the ice in a way she’d never anticipated.
For Huang, wild ice is uniquely thrilling. “You don’t know what you’re going to get anytime you step out on the ice,” she says. “One day, it could be perfectly smooth, and the next day, the wind has torn it up and you’re jumping over cracks.”
She embraces the unpredictability of the ice and uses her background in high-level skating to showcase her artistry through improvisation. “I’m lucky,” she says, “very few people can say they can skate on the wild ice and just have full freedom and do whatever they want.”
While she initially used her Instagram account @theworldwithangelina to showcase photos of her travels, in 2022, she began posting videos of herself skating to document her newfound creative outlet. Many of her posts have gone viral, with some getting more than a million views, and there’s even a short film about her life, but Huang doesn’t see herself as an influencer. “I started filming videos really for mostly myself,” she says. “But I’m just so happy that people enjoy and find inspiration from it.”
As her connection with wild ice deepened, Huang reconnected with indoor skating to keep up her skills and found another skating home with the Wisconsin Skating, UW–Madison’s Figure Skating Club. Naturally, when the club realized a former national champion was on campus, they tried to recruit her into competitive skating. However, Huang chose to skate recreationally only, and eventually she became a coach and choreographer for the club.
“Skating is a unique sport in the sense that it’s very individualistic,” says Huang. “The figure skating club helped me find a community in skating, which is something the competitive world doesn’t really offer. They became my family.”
After graduation, Huang moved to Chicago to start her career in marketing while continuing her freelance photography and videography business. Her time with the Wisconsin Figure Skating Club also helped her hone her interest in coaching and choreographing, particularly with young skaters.
“My whole goal in coaching and my content creation is to show people that skating is something you can really, truly enjoy,” she says. “It’s an art, a passion, and I want to show the positive side of skating that I think the competitive world doesn’t always show.”
Looking ahead, Huang plans to continue her travels. Her skating bucket list includes taking a helicopter to skate on Alaskan glaciers and catching the alpine lakes’ first freeze in Banff, Canada. But no matter how far she travels, “Madison will always have a special place in my heart,” Huang says. “In competitive skating, we always refer to the rink as our ‘home ice.’ Madison is my home wild ice.”
